


Feathered mirth.

by veinsofcyanide



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Australian wildlife, Birds, Blood and Gore, Gen, Hitchcock would be proud, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 14:31:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14474715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veinsofcyanide/pseuds/veinsofcyanide
Summary: Australia doesn't like kookaburras. At all.





	Feathered mirth.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello dear reader,  
> This is my first somewhat-horror fic I'm posting on here. I'm a little nervous as I'm usually an eager consumer of horror rather than a producer, but you know... Practice makes perfect. 
> 
> Bruce is, obviously, my headcanon for Australia's human name. 
> 
> [Written for blackqvilll on Tumblr](http://veinsofcyanide.tumblr.com/post/173410496788/aph-australia-drabble-d)
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy this! 
> 
> -Cyanide

Have you ever heard a kookaburra laugh?

It always starts softly, like a low hum. A gentle chuckle. It’s soft, almost endearing. Some would liken it to a young boy’s glee; slowly rising from giggles to rambunctious laughter, echoing throughout the eucalyptus trees and shaking the waters of the billabongs with its growing howl.

They laugh at dawn. They laugh at dusk. They laugh whenever it pleases them.

Bruce always hated the damn birds. They always made him feel uneasy in the gruesome way birds usually did. With their beaks and their claws and their beady little eyes- He was almost convinced that they were the envoys of trickster gods from times long past.

He couldn’t help but flinch whenever he heard a kookaburra’s cries. When the sun would set and the sky would don peach and lavender hues. When the stars barely came out… He heard them. He knew they were there.

Bruce wasn’t usually a fearful man, no. He liked to think the opposite of himself, actually. There were very few things that could throw him off- and none could do so as well as a kookaburra’s laugh.

He had recurring nightmares about the birds. It would always start with one. One bird who would glance down upon him from among the branches of a dark tree. Cocking its head to one side, then to the other, as though it was studying him, his physical form.  
Then, he could feel it. He could feel the bird judging him. As the Gods of yore picked him apart and stripped him bare.  
Hopping from one branch to another, the bird would keep its obsidian eyes locked on Bruce. He couldn’t move. He could only watch, stare in awe at this malicious little creature who stared him down, unyielding, fearless, unforgiving.

Then, it would start laughing.

Slow at first, soft yet threatening, churning Bruce’s innards as he stepped back in fear. He felt adrenaline rushing through him, pumping through his veins as though he felt threatened. _Threatened_. By a bird.

A _bird_.

Then, all of a sudden, the kookaburra’s laughter soared to the skies, its cruel gaze still fixated on its victim as its mirth turned to a blood-curdling howl.

Tears pricked at Bruce’s eyes as he knew what was to come. For he knew, he _knew_ , what was to come. Recurring nightmares did that to people, didn’t they? Haunting them to the point of insanity?

The laugh stopped. Not a single light was to be seen. The sun had set, the sky was black. The only light he’d see was the reflection of the moon in the billabong at his feet.

Quiet. Silence. _Nothing_.

Then, everything at once.

A devilish chorus of cacophonous jeering was the backdrop to Bruce’s demise.  
It was no use for him to fight it anymore. It always started with one bird, then another, then another. As though the feathered beasts has rallied themselves to lunge at him collectively, they all swooped in with their beaks and their claws and their beady little eyes. Glaring at him. Laughing at him. Pulling him apart.

Their long beaks punctured his skin, drawing blood as they dug his flesh for the meat they craved. Snapping and pulling at veins and arteries alike, they attacked him and laughed louder and louder, mocking him, ruining him, feeding upon him.

No matter how much the birds would prey upon his flesh, he simply wouldn’t die. He laid there and took it, watching as his flesh came undone, as he was eaten to the bone.

And they laughed. Oh, how they _laughed_ . They laughed as he kicked and screamed. They laughed as he cried and begged. They laughed as he let out a final sob and finally fell silent.  
One of the birds fed upon his throat, piercing its beak through his Adam’s apple and ripping out his vocal chords to feed her young. Blood gushed from each of his wounds, spilling onto the ground under him, seeping into the soil and feeding the tree he had stood beneath.

It was there, usually, that Bruce would wake up. So he did. Slowly, gently, rising from his tormented sleep with tears in his eyes and pain shooting throughout his body. Weak and sore, he woke up at the crack of dawn, still shaken by the agony he had suffered throughout his nightly hallucinations.

Feet on the wooden floors of his bedroom, he heard the floorboards creak under his weight. He was there. He was whole, unscathed, alive.

Relieved.

He walked through his home and got himself some coffee, watching as the dark brown brew filled his mug before he walked out to his back yard to watch the sun rise, as the benevolent light of the morning’s greetings cleansed his soul of the terrors he felt.

A hand going to his neck, he felt himself for wounds or scars.

It was a dream. It was all a dream.

“ _Stupid fuckin’ birds_ …” he grumbled, eyes going up to the eucalyptus that stood proudly in his garden, watching as the gentle breeze rustled the leaves.

And there, among the branches, the kookaburra laughed again.


End file.
